Last week, Rihanna tweeted this and, within a nanosecond (maybe less), the glorious world of the Interwebs got orgasmic with accusations. They thought the Instagram pic of a rice cake bag with sunglasses and big hoop earrings was a jab at Chris “Ike 2.0” Brown’s half-Vietnamese canoodling buddy Karrueche Tran.
If it was a dig at Tran, then yes, it was in poor taste — but we aren’t 100 percent that this was directed at Tran (by the way, I had no idea who this homegirl was). Perhaps we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Rihanna may just have a fetish for dressing up healthy snacks in accessories and calling them “her bitch.” Based on her song “Birthday Cake”, she does seem to have an affinity for sexualizing food. Perhaps she has a hidden collection of Instagram pics that include things like a bag of kale chips adorned in a scarf or a box of vegan cookies in a fedora and horn-rimmed glasses. Or maybe this is some sort of weird viral marketing campaign for her role in the sort-of-anticipated movie, Battleship. This may just remain an unsolved mystery that will haunt us forever.
Nonetheless, I can see how people can use the context clues of her past and automatically assume this is racist. Do I take offense? Not really. The picture is so ambiguous that I don’t feel like wasting my time trying to decipher Riri’s code. I’d rather focus on other details of the picture — like her use of generic rice cakes. She’s a pop superstar. She could have at least splurged for some name brand rice cakes — or even real Asian rice cakes for that matter.
